REUTERS MAGAZINE-The drone war

(David Rohde is a Reuters columnist. Any opinions expressed are
his own.)

By David Rohde

Jan 17 (Reuters) - They kill without warning, are
comparatively cheap, risk no American lives, and produce
triumphant headlines. Over the last three years, drone strikes
have quietly become the Obama administration's weapon of choice
against terrorists.

Since taking office, President Barack Obama has unleashed
five times as many drone strikes as George W. Bush authorized in
his second term in the White House. He has transformed drone
attacks from a rarely used tactic that killed dozens each year
to a twice-weekly onslaught that killed more than 1,000 people
in Pakistan in 2010. Last year, American drone strikes spread to
Somalia and Libya as well.

In the wake of the troubled, trillion-dollar American
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, drone strikes are a talisman
in Washington. To cash-strapped officials, drones eliminate the
United States' enemies at little human, political, or financial
cost.

The sweeping use of drone strikes in Pakistan, though, has
created unprecedented anti-American sentiment in that country.
While U.S. intelligence officials claim that only a handful of
civilians have died in drone attacks, the vast majority of
Pakistanis believe thousands have perished. Last year, the
Pakistani government apparently blocked American drone strikes
after tensions escalated between the two governments.

After a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in January and
American commandos killed Osama bin Laden in March, there were
no drone strikes there for weeks at a time. In November, drone
strikes stopped again after an American airstrike killed 26
Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan. As of late
December, there had been no strikes in Pakistan for six weeks,
the longest pause since 2008, and a glaring example of the
limitations of drone warfare.

My perspective on drones is an unusual one. In November
2008, the Afghan Taliban kidnapped two Afghan colleagues and me
outside Kabul and ferried us to the tribal areas of Pakistan.
For the next seven months, we were held captive in North and
South Waziristan, the focus of the vast majority of American
drone strikes during that period. In June 2009, we escaped.
Several months later, I wrote about the experience in a series
of articles for the New York Times, my employer at the time.

Throughout our captivity, American drones were a frequent
presence in the skies above North and South Waziristan.
Unmanned, propeller-driven aircraft, they sounded like a small
plane - a Piper Cub or Cessna-circling overhead. Dark specks in
a blue sky, they could be spotted and tracked with the naked
eye. Our guards studied their flight patterns for indications
of when they might strike. When two drones appeared overhead
they thought an attack was imminent. Sometimes it was, sometimes
it was not.
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